Page - 51 - in Loss and Damage from Climate Change - Concepts, Methods and Policy Options

2 TheEthicalChallenges in theContextofClimateLossandDamage 51 partof itsownintegrity.Lossofculturalheritagerelates tohistoricalcharacteristics, where no replica of the lost object will be regarded as equivalent to the original. Finally, biodiversity, anotheroftenquotedNELDdistinct fromecosystemservices, isvaluedasanassetofvariety. Offsetting lossesof irreplaceableendsnecessarily reliesonprovidingalternative ends that are perceivedby those affected asbeing able toprovide a similar level of wellbeing compared to before the loss. The fishermen’s communitymight receive funding enabling them to become farmers with comparable income levels, food security and social status as before.However, according toGoodin (1989), a shift inpreferenceswill havebeen forcedupon them, infringingupon their integrity and personalautonomyandultimately leavingtheminastateofundeservedharm.What follows is that actions that inflict the lossof irreplaceableassetsonotherscannever befullyaddressedbyanyamountofremedy.Thisisespeciallyimportantconsidering financial payments.Whatever amount ofmoney is paid to a harmed community, if theendsare irreplaceable,bydefinitionsuchpaymentscannotmake thecommunity wholeagain.Butfinancialpaymentsandotheractions recognising the factofunde- servedL&Dare certainly important steps for regaining a just baseline distribution (cf.ThompsonandOtto2015;Huggel et al. 2016). Non-economic but replaceable values can either fulfil different ends or consti- tute ends in themselves,with thedistinctionbeing culturally- or even individually- contingent. Ecosystem services, for example, are often valued as ameans because they provide important resources for humanhealth and nourishment. The value of culturalheritage in turnmightbeunderstoodbysomeasameans to theendofcom- munity identityor social stability or byothers as anend in itself. In case the losses aremeans towards some end, an appropriate responsewould ideally replace those lostmeans, i.e. to provide those affectedwithnewmeans to achieve the sameends (cf.Goodin1989).Followingsuchanunderstanding,lossofecosystemservices(e.g. healthandnourishment)couldsensiblybe responded tobyprovidingmedication to maintainhumanhealthandsupportingagriculturalproduction tomaintainprevious (if adequate) levelsofnourishment. Inotherwords, inorder toevenoutundeserved harms due to climate change, non-economic valueswhich fulfil ends requiremea- suresfortheirreplacementbyothernon-economicvaluesorbyfinancialpayments.In contrast toirreplaceableassets, ifnon-economicvaluesareperceivedasreplaceable, theundeservedharmcanbe fullyaddressedand the justbaselinecanbemaintained despite inflictionofharm.This ismoreclearly thecasewheneconomicassetsareat issue. Inmanycases, economicgoods canbe replacedby simply reimbursing their economiccostsorbyprovidingasubstituteof the same(market)value. It isfarfromclear,however,whatmechanismswill leadtoprogressinmakingthe most vulnerablemore resilient to climate change. In linewithpolicyproposals and current literature onmechanisms to tackle L&D (e.g.AOSIS 2008; Burkett 2014; MaceandVerheyen2016;Mechler andSchinko2016),we identifyL&Dmeasures comprising the following three components (see chapter by Schinko et al. 2018): (1)Comprehensiveriskmanagement tosupportandpromoteriskmanagement tools to reduce the risk of future losses anddamages in addition tomitigation and adap- tation, (2) risk financing comprising risk-transfer, sharing and pooling to support